A Look Back on Nokia’s Legacy

The good old Nokia 8250, on which many of us broke phone bill records.

Remember when the classiest ringtones you could get were merely polyphonic?
Or how about playing Snake on a clunky 8250 while waiting for the bus?

We’ve got iPhones and Angry Birds nowadays, but let’s not forget the iconic Nokia – on whose phones a generation of teenagers grew up with.


Nokia 8850 - The Godfather of luxury phones back in 2000.

The Finnish multinational communications corporation seems to have a very small slice of the local market pie today, but there once was a time where it had its cake, and could eat it too.

Everyone has likely owned or used a Nokia phone at least once, and for good reason too. The iPhone wasn’t around back in 1992!

Jokes aside, the mobile phone really took off in the late 90s, and that was where Nokia’s market share exploded. In 1997, the Nokia 6110 became the first mobile phone to feature the classic Snake game. The next year, 1998, Nokia became the world leader in mobile phones.


What was your high score for this?
Coincidence? Maybe. I remember loving my Nokia more for the hours of unceasing entertainment Snake could provide than for its text-messaging capability.


In 1999, mobile Internet was developed. Nokia launched their 7110, the world’s first WAP handset. That was their trick – to always stay one step ahead. In 2002, they came up with the brand’s first 3G-enabled phone: the Nokia 6650.
Jump to 2005 – Nokia’s N series was introduced as the next generation of multimedia devices; a prophecy that fulfilled itself the same year, with Nokia selling its billionth phone.


Choose your weapon

In 2007, Nokia’s market share was 30.4%, according to media analysts AdMob. And at one point, eight out of ten mobile phones sold in Asia were Nokias.

But lets look at Nokia today. Its presence in the local market is nearly unnoticed, even though 85% of digital consumers own an Internet-capable mobile phone. Gone is the N series – replaced by a wily foe, Apple’s iPhone. Where teenagers once played Snake and Snake II, they now flick Angry Birds across sleek panels of screens.


Bounce was better, by far!

AdMob reported in 2010 that the sole survivor of Nokia’s legacy for our markets was the N70. Today, Nomura Equity Research has forecast that Nokia’s worldwide share of the mobile phone market will drop to 19.9%, with its smartphone slice of the pie declining from 25.5% to 13.1% by the end of the year. Its relevance in a world of Androids and iPhones has dwindled to nearly nothing, especially since it was better known for mobile phones than anything else. Today, it’s fastest fingers first on Facebook, and not with SMS. (Do you even remember what those letters stand for?)

But not all is lost for Nokia, once beloved by many.


Stephen Elop rallying the troops.

On 26 October, at the Nokia World 2011 event, Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop revealed the Nokia Lumia, a smartphone model running on the Windows Phone OS. It is Nokia’s first mobile phone series to run Windows Phone, and is part of the first wave of Windows Phone devices to be released by Nokia. These phones – the Nokia Lumia 800 and Nokia Lumia 710 – have already hit Europe and UK, and will be expected launch in Asia before the end of 2011.

Nokia is finally steering itself in the right direction – that of smartphones and the future. It may be an uphill climb from here on Nokia, but we’ll treasure the fond memories you gave us in the last decade.


Will we be talking about this phone like we do now for the 8250, 10 years later?